Works · Novella · 1890

The Great God Pan

First appeared 13 Dec 1890 in one issue of The Whirlwind

Nocturne plate · illustration (AI-generated, 2026)

In a house near a river, the surgeon Dr Raymond tells his friend Clarke that a small operation on the brain will lift the veil between ordinary sight and the real world, and that the ancients called what lies behind it the god Pan. The patient is a young woman, Mary. Years later in London, men of standing are found dead by their own hands, and a woman who goes by several names is connected with each. Clarke, who keeps papers on the affair, and a clubman named Villiers put the pieces together from memoirs, letters and street talk. Machen makes terror out of fragments, rumour and what nobody will say aloud.

I do not know whether any human being has ever lifted that veil; but I do know, Clarke, that you and I shall see it lifted this very night from before another’s eyes.

Chapter 1 (The Experiment). Checked against Project Gutenberg ebook #389 (Gutenberg ebook 389 gives the book text in eight chapters; the file does not state whether it follows the 1894 or a later (1922/1926) revision)

The publication record

The Great God Pan

Arthur Machen

Novella

Magazine 13 Dec 1890 in one issue of The Whirlwind An early form of the story appeared in one issue of The Whirlwind. The day rests on two independent reference works (SF Encyclopedia, Jess Nevins) and no scan of the issue was seen. [1][2]
Revised edition 1894 John Lane (Keynotes Series, vol. V); US issue Roberts Brothers, Boston, London ‘The Great God Pan’ much revised, published with ‘The Inmost Light’ as The Great God Pan and The Inmost Light. The Boston title page reads ‘Roberts Bros., 1894; London: John Lane, Vigo St’. The exact month of 1894 was not established. [3][1][4][5]

Title page, Great God Pan & Inmost Light (Keynotes Series, Bodley Head) Aubrey Beardsley (1872-1898), 1894. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Arthur Machen, 1863–1947. The Great God Pan first appeared when Arthur Machen was 27.

Attribution and scope

Published in 1894 in one volume with ‘The Inmost Light’ as The Great God Pan and The Inmost Light.

Facts

Machen’s story reached print in two stages. An early form appeared in The Whirlwind on 13 December 1890; the full tale, ‘much rev’, was published in 1894 as The Great God Pan and The Inmost Light.[1][2][3]
John Lane issued the 1894 book as volume V of his Keynotes Series, a run begun in 1893. The Victoria and Albert Museum holds Aubrey Beardsley’s cover design for it.[4][7]
The story is told through a club-story frame, memoirs and reported testimony. The SF Encyclopedia notes its manifest and acknowledged influence on H. P. Lovecraft.[1][6]

Setting

Late-Victorian London and a Welsh border village, with a prologue at a doctor’s house[6]

London
Soho
Paul Street
the borders of Wales

Themes

Notes on dates 2 notes on disputed dates and attribution

Date of the book: the V&A record for the Beardsley cover design gives 1895 for the reproduction and calls the Keynotes volume ‘Published 1894-1896’; the title-page scan, the Dictionary of Welsh Biography and the SF Encyclopedia give 1894. Resolved: 1894.
The exact month of the 1894 publication is not established by an authoritative source; only the year is shown.

Threads

Threads in

No sourced relation to an earlier work is recorded.

Threads out

No sourced relation from a later work on this timeline is recorded.

Contemporaries

Works on the timeline that first appeared within three years of 1890, and the other writers alive when The Great God Pan appeared (ages computed from sourced dates).